t 



lATIONS ON A THEME 



GRACE HAZARD CONKLING 




THE BLINDMAN PRIZE POEM 



19 2 2. 



ivTKV h^OSMUTK or fiQOTH i 



JUL 



VARIATIONS ON A THEME 

Grace Hazard Conkling 




HUBLIIHED nS THE POBTRV 80CIATT OP SOUTH CAROLIHik 

THE CAROLINA PRESS 

CHARL,EBTON, SOUTH CAKOUNA 

MDCCCCXXII 



6^^ 



THE BLINDMAN PRIZE POEM 

1922 

THE FIRST POEM TO RECEIVE THE AWARD 



©ClAr>'77494 



'"h.(B 



PREFACE. 

THIS BLINDMAN PRIZE poem has been published in a limited 
edition by the Poetry Society of South Carolina for distribution 
to poets, members of the Society, and others actively interested 
in the art of poetry. 

THE OBJECT OF THE PRIZE is to stimulate the writing of 
sustained poems of considerable length, and to provide some 
adequate recompense to the creative aitist for the time and 
labor involved. 

"VARIATIONS ON A THEME" was chosen for the prize by Miss 
Amy Lowell who acted as sole judge in the 1921-22 contest, which 
was international in its scope, several hundred poems having 
been submitted from all over the United States, England, and 
the English Dominions. 

THE BLINDMAN PRIZE of $250 is offered annually through the 
Poetry Society of South Carolina by W. Van R. Whitall, Esq., 
in commemoration of Hei-vey Allen's war poem the "Blindman" 
first published in the North American Review for December 
1919. 



HONORABLE MENTION POEMS 
Blindman Prize Contest 1922 

From the Journal of Crispin Wallace Stevens 

Avatar Babette Deutsch 

The Elders Come to Her Hildegarde Planner 

The Indians in the Woods Janet Loxely Lewis 

The Garden Harold Monro 

Behold America Robert J. Roe 

The Voice of an Unknown Soldier James W. Dean 

Oranges Louise Morey Bowman 

Mutations on the Phoenix Herbert Read 

The Stone Guest N. S. But imell 

The Pirates Beatrice Ravenel 



PART ONE 

Fresh Pomegranates 

and 
Green Linden-blooms 

Mode 



Title — a phrase from Wagner's "Meistemnger" 

6 



PRELUDE 



April hung a sky of soft indigo 

Above my head 

And suddenly while I counted stars 

Lost them again ... 

/ had thoughts of you 

That stopped my thinking 

As though you had showered me 

With warm dark roses .... 



VARIATIONS 

I- 

So you would have me come to life, 

Breathe, burn, feel, 

I who had learned listlessness. 

Myself lost, rocks more aware. 

Bitter rocks 

Sun-repelling . . . 

I ask what it is you see in my look . . . 

Your own splendor? 

Fire of your spirit, fire 

Alert, exquisite, full of demand? 

You, like amber, you who know 

Bright darkness of amber, 

Dx> you see yourself in my eyes .... 

Do you stand there 

Golden ? 

When you turn 

Does your glance find me ? 

Now at last is there life . . . 

Is there warmth 

Hidden ? 

Presence . . . rush of petals . . breath 

Answering breath ? 

Do you kindle me to faint flame, oh relentless 

Spendthrift of fire? 

II. 

All day the hillside flickered with white birches 

Now they have gone away. 

I saw them hurrying on shy feet 

Into the silver blur 

Of evening. 

Now darkness opens 

Like a flower. 

Over the trees, over the breathless trees 

The hyacinth-blue of the air 

Dims to purple. 

I have seen such shadow 



In the hollow of a wave, 
But here is mystery 
Of woven leaves. 

Hold me, 

Hold me closer 

For the sake of this vanishing beauty 

You have locked into my heart! 

III. 

Tender, heavy with tenderness 
This midnight . . . 
Soft to the cheek . . . 
WaiTTi satin softness . . . 

Deep-breasted slow-breathing languor of lotus dark . . . 
Petals of fire-opal hid for an hour as though they were not 

in bloom . . . 

IV. 

Where were we ? 

Lilac-leaves or leaves of young bambo-o . . . 

It makes no difference in the dream I had 

When I saw the moon caught in a featheiy spray, 

Caught in a cowweb of her own light 

Among new-fledged trees. 

You disentangled the moon . . . laid it on my open palms , . . 

You said, 

"Now you need not cry for it any more." 

I was careful of the moon 

As though it had been a moth or an orchid . . . 

I dared not breathe 

For fear its light would die ... 

Dazzled, 

I closed my eyes. 

When I opened them, 

You had picked up the moon 

And gone away. 

V. 

It was along a river with an Indian name 
Past a crocus-colored mountain 
Under tumbled clouds 
That we ran . . . 

The light glinted from marsh-grass . . . willow-twigs . . . 
We saw pale water through lattice-work of willows . . . 
This was a day you forgot to love me 

8 



Because you had so many thing's to think about, 

And all the way through the Chopin Sonata 

You never suspected you were out-of-doors with me and away 

Running in the Spring wind . . . 

VI. 

Is there anything more for us than opening eyes to a rose- 
flush of clout! . . . opening eyes to a bouquet of pigeon- 
backs scattering down out of the wind . . . blue and 
gray-violet . . . buff and mx)ther-of-pearl . . . 

You with your head bowed on my shoulder . . . silent a long 
time ... is there anything more ? 

Is this all . . . morning like a bronze shell for the wind to 
blow through . . , moming tilted on an edge of purple 
horizon-rim ... an hour of rose-flush ... an hour of 
bronze-hazel . . . noon by and by . . . and you with your 
head on my shoulder wanting me with a thousand years 
of wanting? 

Why don't you tell me what you are thinking with your head 
on my shoulder? Is there no meaning in ache of empty 
beautiful air . . . biting go'd of sun . . . none in un- 
answered moon or sea-mist stars? Is it in vain the hills 
are wanting' something with a thousand years of wanting? 

You . . . silent a long time . . . can you see anything more 
for us anywhere ... or is this all ? 

VII. 

I have seen you quiet 

As an evening sky . . . 

Or driven like a flake of pear-blossom 

On the stream of the wind . . . 

I have seen your pallor 

And shadowiness . . . 

I have touched you 

And known denial . . . 

VIII. 

The three mountains in the sky 

Rest upon the pointed cedears of our mountain. 

They are steep in heaven, 

Sheer as the cliffs below us. 

. . . Impossible to say what color 

Flowers on those rocks! 

9' 



It might be an April country 
Of almond trees, 

I could more easily let you go 

Under a harsher sunset. 

April floats into my eyes 

Out of coral valleys ... 

Leave me . . . leave me now 

Lest the granite ways remind your feet 

Of darkness . . . 

Dusk is a gauze of ruby shadows. 

Leave me . . . 

I shall be thinking of this moment 

Aftei'ward . . . 

Your kiss ... a drift of almond petals across my lips 

Almond flowers falling at Spring's end . . . 



10 



PART TWO. 

End of the World 
Mode 



PRELUDE 



This web of dusk and sunset 

Has caught thistledown hills 

And a moth of mist . . . 

Shall we disentangle them, 

Let them blow away? 

Or shall we keep them, to make real our dream 

After the Puritan moon 

Has parted us? 



12 



VARIATIONS 

I. 

Don't let yesterday go, 

The tawny pheasant-wing of it stretched over the west, 

Don't tell me the stairway of those hills 

Led nowhere? 

When we looked back from the dark to the lighted street 

Because of election drums and scrawled red fire 

Don't say it did not matter 

Our cheeks touched . . . and our lips! 

Yesterday poured itself away in stars . . . 
Down they spilled and dripped like silver water . . . 
If it was the same music to your heart it was to mine 
Don't let yesterday go! 

II. 

You say you understand . . . 
Talk as if you did ! 
Open the door of my mind 
And come in! 

Will you always be needing Tennyson 
To show you shaking light? 
Will you never unlearn melancholy, 
See November laughing? 

Laughing at you for a little boy lost, 
Rolling you gold pumpkins down the cornfields. 
Blindfolding you with meadow-mist 
Because you will not look at them! 

Is color nothing? 

Is it nothing to see a hill like a passion-flower? 

Can't you unravel the sky 

And wrap me in the blue silk of it 

Because I am cold with teaching you November 

And you haven't love enough left 

To warm me ? 

IIL 

Oh content with little 

When I would give all! 

You letting fall the ripe fruit of moments 

I press into your hands . . . 

13 



Melting ineffable ivory of the flesh of fruit 
Dripping honey and wonder ... 
Sharp high-flavored moments, 
Pomegranate seeds tasting of strangeness, 
Soft bewildered intervals deep-colored, 
Fruit from the south 
You do not know! 

Days we have not chosen. 

Days we shall never share ... 

Lost days fallen into the purple grasses 

Of our autumn! 

Oh incredibly perverse, 

With lips Locked against the pulp and dew 

Of bountiful hours, 

Will you never know the bloom and flavor 

Of sun-warmed moments ? 

Will you never taste late-ripened moments 

That have escaped frost ? 

Days we have not chosen, 
Days we shall never share, 
Lost days trodden into grasses 
Under snow .... 

IV. 

Why did you go before the Chinese lily 

Finished uncurling from its paper sheath? 

I had named every flower of the seven 

For a mood of yours: 

Now you will not see yourself 

In bloom. 

Always I knew you would go. 

But I had timed you by a winter lily, 

Mood by mood unfolding . . . 

"I shall learn them all at last," I said. 

One with a gold heart is your remembering, 

But your forgetting has a gold heart too. 

One is the name you called me in the dark . . . 

One, a clear silence cold as frost: 

The delicate irony of your tenderness 

Flowers on the same stem with your irresponsible cruelty 

14 



All these are star-pointed . . . definite . . . 
But the seventh is yet in bud. 

I am afraid to see it open 
Lest it betray you. 

V. 
Now I remember that you searched my face 
Lest any wronj? might threaten you 
From my heart . . . 
And the fear in your swift look 
Of one hurt by earth . . . 
Thrust back 
Out of heaven . . . 

What was it you saw ? 

Dark 

Against light 

What sharp wonder? 

I thought you w.ould be the last 

To leave me powerless. 

There is gold air 

Poured upon hills . . . 

Shining air slow-flowing . . . full . . . 

The wind in flood . . . 

I have no joy of this 

Because of you. 

I know where trees in flower 

Wait for me . . . 

I am lost. 

There is no beauty 

Can find me. 



■*■>* 



15 



A LIMITED NUMBERED EDITION OF 
FIVE HDNDRED COPIES .OF WBICH 
TH.IS IS NUMBER _. 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




The Poetry Sociefy of South Carolina 

An official publication of the Society 



